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sábado, 21 de julio de 2012

Summer 2012: Eeks! What play are we going to do next?!?!

When I'm up to my eyeballs in a play, there is always a moment of panic. Are there any more ideas out there?! I become so attached to the play we're doing, the idea of coming up with a new play for next year seems impossible. but somehow, once the adrenaline has died down and the performance is behind us..... a new idea always does pop up.

Obviously, you need a theme that will capture the interest of the kids taking part. So far we've done monsters (Where The Wild Things Are), dragons and pirates (Puff The Magic Dragon) and ghosts (The Blood-Chilling Curse of the Old House on the Hill). And this year..... it's going to be aliens!

This theme lends itself to a children's theatre workshop on lots of levels. It is instantly appealing (especially to rowdy boys) and it has great dramatic potential:

you can have fun with the costumes and props (lots of potential for kitsch comedy)

there is an abundance of sources for inspiration: Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who, Flash Gordon... to name but a few

there is a lot of great (themed) music out there: films like Apollo 13, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Alien series

and (our pet theme!) outer space is ideal for black light! All those glow-in-the-dark planets!

As soon as we fix on this theme, my mind is buzzing with ideas. We can do a parody of the 1969 moon landing (and get Armstrong's famous "smallstep/giant leap" phrase all mixed up perhaps?)... we can have hula-hooping kids as blacklight saturns (hula hooping being the lastest craze with my daughters)... what the heck, we can do an alien version of Romeo and Juliet!

As usual, one play is hardly behind us, there are eleven months to go before our next workshop and I'm already looking for inspiration!